stonecrandall Chapter 148 The Eternals and the Tiger Talisman
Chapter 148 The Eternals and the Tiger Talisman
Chapter 148 The Eternals and the Tiger Talisman
The blue light landed, and the three returned to the spaceship.
Thanos walked straight to the bridge, pulled out the navigation system, and began calculating the jump route through the Vectati system. He did this very skillfully, tracing the star map with his finger and marking all the interstellar obstacles he might encounter along the way.
Wanda sat diagonally opposite the Holy Lord, her palms outstretched. Red magic decompressed the data brought back from the Illuminati, which floated in the air, dense text and charts covering half the cabin.
The Holy Lord didn't rush to look at the coordinates, but instead stared at the Eternal Clan files in Wanda's hands.
The Illuminati's recording methods had the bad habits of academic institutions. Most of the content was extremely boring and full of nonsense. One thing could be described in three pages, two and a half of which were "speculation" and "doubt". However, Reed's data organization skills were indeed excellent. Key information was indexed and marked. From the origin, distribution, and individual abilities of the Eternals to their relationship with the Celestials, the entries were clear.
The Holy Lord flipped through the pages quickly, skimming over large sections of text, until one document made him stop.
It was a genetic analysis report on the Eternals, sourced from "sampling from the ruins of the Seresi Eternal settlement," with the date and collector unknown. Only the Illuminati database number and annotations added later by Reed were available. The report was short, with its core conclusion in a single paragraph:
The genetic makeup of the Eternals is 97 percent identical to that of humans on Earth. The remaining 3 percent difference is concentrated in a set of sequences with unknown functions. These sequences have extremely high energy density and cannot be decoded by current methods.
The Holy Lord read this sentence several times.
"Ninety-seven percent," he read the number aloud.
Wanda leaned closer for a look: "Are the Eternals human?"
"Not human," the Holy Lord stood up, walked to the middle of the floating data, reached out and pushed aside several documents, placing the genetic report and another Celestial Group observation log together: "They are modified humans."
The contents recorded in the Celestials' observation logs and the genetic reports form a complete chain: hundreds of thousands of years ago, the Celestials conducted three genetic experiments on primitive humans on Earth. The first produced the Eternals, the second produced the Aberrants, and the third involved fine-tuning the genes of ordinary humans. The Illuminati already knew about these things; they were nothing new.
But there is a detail that has been overlooked in the log.
The Celestials' experimental reports repeatedly mentioned the term "projection implantation." Specifically, the extraordinary abilities granted to the Eternals were not created out of thin air, but rather the Celestials extracted a projection from some kind of "prototype power" and wrote it into the human genome.
Prototype power.
The Holy Lord frowned and continued flipping through the pages. Reed's annotation here had a question mark, with the words "No physical counterpart found; possibly internal terminology of the Celestials" written next to it.
But the Holy Lord knew that it wasn't some kind of technical term.
He mentally reviewed the information about the twelve zodiac animal talismans: Rat, Snake, Monkey, Dragon, Rooster, Pig, Horse, Rabbit—eight in hand. He had clues about the Dog and Sheep; he was still missing the Ox and Tiger. The Tiger talisman, embodying the power of Tai Chi and the source of Yin-Yang balance, was the most unique of the twelve talismans. While the other eleven each had their own function, the Tiger talisman was the core; without it, the power of the remaining eleven could never be unified.
"Projection." The Holy Lord repeated the word, pulled up the three percent of undecipherable sequences in the genetic report, and compared them with the ability list of the Eternal Race individuals.
Icarus: Manipulation of Cosmic Energy.
Cersei: Transformation of matter.
Gilgamesh: Superhuman physique.
Ajax: Healing.
Each individual Eternal has different abilities, but their energy characteristics are highly uniform. The Illuminati's detection instruments couldn't read what it was, but the Holy Lord could—it was a remnant of the Tiger Talisman.
Or rather, it's not so much the Tiger Talisman itself, but a part of its power, which the Celestials intercepted, divided, and projected into the genes of every Eternal being. The Celestials used the power of the Tiger Talisman fragments as seeds to modify ancient humans, strengthening their own power and creating the Eternal race that exists today.
This explains why Arithm came to Earth in person, and why the Celestials' interest in human civilization far surpasses that of other planets. It's not because of humanity itself, but because the Tiger Talisman once appeared on Earth, and the Celestials captured its projection for experiments.
The Holy Lord tossed the documents in his hand back into the floating data pile and took a few steps in the cabin.
Wanda watched from the side without interrupting. She couldn't process information as quickly as Shendu, but she understood the core meaning: "So the power of the Eternals comes from the Tiger Talisman."
"A projection from the Tiger Talisman," the Holy Lord corrected, "the projection is not the original, but there is a connection between the two."
"What kind of contact?"
"Control." After saying these two words, the Holy Lord stopped explaining.
Wanda paused for two seconds before realizing the logic: the projection was a copy, the Tiger Talisman was the master copy, and whoever possessed the master copy could theoretically directly intervene in all copies. In other words, whoever obtained the Tiger Talisman could control the power source of every Eternal.
It's not about control at the combat level, it's about control at the root level.
The switch is in your hand; if you want to disable someone's ability, just turn it.
Thanos walked over from the bridge, holding a calculated route in his hand: "The Vectati system can be reached in three jumps, and we need to recharge our energy on Novel along the way."
The Holy Lord didn't respond to his question, but instead asked an unrelated one: "Have you ever seen the Eternals?"
Thanos paused for a moment: "It happened on Titan."
What are the differences between the immortals of Titan and those of Earth?
"I've never dealt with them, so it's hard to say." Thanos placed the flight map on the table. "I only know that they rarely show themselves, and when they do, they're usually dealing with the mutants. They weren't here when I wiped out half of the Titans."
"Perhaps he won't be able to come." Shendu forwarded the conclusion of the genetic report to Thanos's terminal.
Thanos stared at the information on the terminal for a moment, then looked up, his expression complex. He had dealt with the Celestials before and knew their style of doing things, but the conclusion that "the Eternals are modified humans" was still quite shocking.
Before Thanos could finish explaining the details of the flight path, the spaceship's external warning system suddenly activated.
According to the information displayed on the alarm, it is a warning of an approaching bio-energy source, a single entity, moving at extremely high speed, with its trajectory pointing in a straight line toward the spaceship.
Thanos glanced at the scan data and closed the flight path map: "Someone's coming."
Wanda retracted the floating document, her red magic gathering at her fingertips, and stepped back half a step behind Shendu.
On the observation screen of the bridge, a golden beam of light was cutting in from deep space, its speed continuously increasing. The energy characteristics were very pure, almost perfectly matching the records of the Eternals in the Illuminati archives.
The golden beam reached the spaceship's hull three seconds later, stopping directly 500 meters in front of it without impact or deceleration. The observation screen zoomed in, revealing a male humanoid figure in dark blue armor, with light flowing from his eyes.
Icarus.